The Circle

The future is coming and the future is transparency. Whether we like it or not, technology is connecting our lives more and more with few people caring as it improves convenience. The audience can look at The Circle in one of two ways, the first being that the lesson taught is the technology is good but is being used and twisted in the wrong hands. Given a noble Shepard, the technology will send us into a new age. The second view, which is the one I prescribe to, is that our society is moving too fast towards convenience and ignoring the big issues that are being trounced in our haste. The scariest thing about the circle is that we are on Pace to have everything that happens be possible in our lifetime. People are more interested in the technology than what they may be giving up to get it. The Circle follows Emma Watson as she gets her dream job at the big progressive social media company called The Circle.

The circle takes a lot of its cues from Google from college like campus, to the open idea of how and when to work. If you substitute the name Google in for The Circle you would barely even notice. Switch out Tom Hanks as the lovable boss who cares with Mark Zuckerberg and you wouldn't miss a beat. The one aspect that was delightfully unexpected was seeing Bill Paxton play Watson's disabled father. It reminds me of how much he was an amazing supporting character. The one downside to his character and the film in general is I do not know if Paxton and Glen Hadley, Watson's mother, are designed to be the old fuddy duddies who are against progress or if they are supposed to be the characters the audience can get behind with the over sharing. Watson walks a tight rope and often sways from side to side when it comes to which side of the debate she is on. At times she is all in at the circle and wants push its agenda even further and then there are times when she acts as though those who are fully enmeshed with the product are some sort of cult.

This all culminates in the dramatic event of the first that the audience is made to believe will finally push her over the edge against the circle and then suddenly she does a 180 and is back on board with simply the message that those at the top are to blame. Given that the film doesn't seem to know what kind of message is trying to send to its audience, whether we need to disconnect or connect completely, the film gets 1 out of 4 stars. It is still an interesting mirror held to society and where we are probably headed.

Free Fire

I'm picking a side, and that side is justice. While Free Fire has accumulated mixed reviews to say the least, those who are against it have called it a bore. To those reviewers, I ask them what movie where they watching? For Free Fire is anything but boring and it is an affront to justice to think so. I can only guess that they were surprised by the different take on the Mexican stand off from today's big movie hits. Ben Wheatley does not have a constant barrage of bullets being fired with high action explosions or the big hail fire finally. It is much subtler and character based. Now these characters don't get much development as people but they are funny, crazy people to begin with. One of the great character actors of our time, Sharlto Copley leads the group with a quasi-Austrian accent that you can't really pin down where he is from. He is a shift gun dealer always looking out for himself and trying to push what he can get away with. Arnie Hammer play a refreshing comical intermediary/bodyguard who thinks everyone should relax more because he's high. Cillian Murphy plays an IRA gun procurer with a no nonsense attitude but manages to bring a bunch with him. Brie Larson rounds out the top four with an interesting performance as an intermediary who brought the two groups together. There are sarcastic quips galore and that might be where many of the other critics got bored but as sarcasm is a part of life for me I adored it. Whenever you begin to get bored with petty bickering a fresh fire fight breaks out or a new monkey wrench is thrown into the mix. The whole ordeal is the right amount of high tension and breaks in the action to give the audience the ability to fully comprehend what is happening. And it is no small feat for the director to make the audience actually care about the wellbeing of any of these characters as they are all despicable criminals only trying to get what's best for them. As the tension rises and the audience becomes more invested in the characters each one gets their just deserts. And that is true justice. 2 1/2 stars out of 4.

Fate of the Furious

Good bye Rock, hello Dwayne Johnson. The man has finally arrived. No longer can it be said that the days of true movie stardom are behind us because Johnson has somehow tapped into the reservoirs of old and burst on the scene as the next big thing. While you might be asking, but he already is a movie star and he already was the highest paid actor in Hollywood for 2016, you would be right. My answer to you is less, he did all those things, but not until Fate of the Furious has he shown his true potential of elevating every scene he is in to good, borderline great movie making. And that is an increasingly more difficult task to do with the ridiculous excess of the Fast and the Furious franchise. The single sequence that is cringeworthy that has been discussed ad nauseam is the interaction between Johnson and Jason Statham discussing their pasts, threatening each other and then laughing and accepting one another. This is the dilemma that the Fast series keeps running into of terrible dialogue and over the top action sequences. If you remove Johnson from the film it is an absolute dumpster fire of trash but with him he elevates it to the third best in the series. The sheer ridiculousness of the film is getting more and more difficult to accept and based on the US box office take, it appears that people may finally be wising up to it. Since Furious 4 they simply have been trying to one up the last movie and they finally may have one upped to far for even the most diehard fans. Don't get me wrong, the film will make over a billion dollars and there will be a ninth, but maybe now the critics and fans are wising up to what they are actually watching. Cars and explosions. By the standard of movie definition, the critics should hate this franchise just like they hate everything that Michael Bay comes up, with which they should. Somehow Vin Diesel has been bullet proof when it comes to his precious car universe. Hopefully we are finally seeing some chinks in the armor.

Fate of the Furious has the Gang fighting against themselves when Cipher (Charlize Theron) randomly shows up at the beginning of the film and shows Dom (Vin Diesel) some information that will motivate him to completely betray his entire 'family' that they have spent the last 6 films (Tokyo Drift excluded) building towards you never turn your back on family. The main question I have at this point is what the heck kind of skills does this team of car racers have that no one else in the world have? They keep getting pulled into these amazing, world ending scenarios and all they can do is drive cars really fast. When did Tej Parker (Ludicrous) become this ultimate hacker able to defeat the world’s most dangerous hacker? The only member of the team that actually has their talents introduced and explained is Ramesy (Nathalie Emmanuel) and that’s only because she created the 'God's Eye' program and was introduced in the last film. Everyone else just picks up these amazing talents whenever the plot needs them to. And the plot needs them to pull things out of thin air a lot. Since when could thousands of cars be hacked and then driven and inserted with autopilots, creating a drone car army? Or be able to do anything with a nuclear football without all the codes from the different people that MOVIES THEMSELVES have taught us they need? Or anyone be able to hack into a NUCLEAR SUBMARINE and drive it remotely? Or completely remove the nuclear fallout from detonated nuclear missiles by simply removing an electronic chip? That uranium doesn't just go away. And all of this is made actually entertaining by the charm and charisma or Dwayne Johnson. Whenever he is not on screen or in the background, the film is laughable and boring. The main lesson here is that Johnson was right to beef with Diesel over screen time because he absolutely save this film from being a clunker. 2 ½ pipes out of 4.

Allied

Allied

The movie that is rumored to break up Branjalina does not live up to the hype. While it is an intriguing historical drama set in the middle of World War II, the famed love story is not developed enough for me to believe. Brad Pitt plays Max Vatan, a Canadian allied spy who is dropped in to Casablanca to meet up with Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard), a French Resistance fighter. Their task is to assassinate the German Ambassador to Morocco in under 10 days. The odds of their survival are low and the stress pushes them together. There are three noticeable moments when the film makers put effort into selling that the couple might be falling in love. None of which warrant Pitt’s abrupt turnaround from his earlier feelings that emotions cause people to make mistakes and die. His sudden proposal of Marianne coming to England and marrying him had me thinking it was some sort of plot twist later on and all part of the allied spy network but (SPOILER ALERT) it’s not. The whole thing had me wanting to love the film but by the ending feeling disappointed. The biggest concern with the film is that the entire premise is that Max and Marianne are deeply madly in love. When you can’t set that up in the first half-hour of buildup, there is something wrong. Eliminate the first quarter outside of England and the film increases in likability by tenfold. Pitt and Cotillard both put in excellent performances especially when the tension rises. The tension is constant throughout the film, just when you get a small reprieve from the central narrative, a subplot tense moment is hurled at you keeping you in suspense until the tension cranks back up in the main story-line. The viewer is never given the typical levity throughout the film to ease the adrenaline and being that it is a drama thriller and not an action thriller, this can get in the way of the enjoyment of the film. It just seems to drag itself along quite a bit, continuously finding minor ways to keep the pressure level high. Other than those issues it is a fine period piece, paying incredible attention to detail and giving a small insight on the German Blitz. 1 pipes out of 4.

Edge of Seventeen

Edge of Seventeen

I will preface this review with that it is coming from someone who had rough teenage years so I have some bias. The idea for the film is well thought out and it is filmed very well. Also with it trying to aim at a wide audience it portrays some common difficulties and struggles of a teenager. That being said, I struggled mightily with the film with my background in high school. Hailee Steinfeld plays Nadine, a 17-year-old struggling with her identity in the world with no one to help her, as her one good parent passes away in front of her eyes from a heart attack. While I know this is a difficult time for her and her family, the director portrays Nadine as a complete outsider at school with only one friend. Because of how attractive Steinfeld is, this simply would not be the case in real life. It also doesn't make sense when she acts like she is no one likes her, and then just blows off a classmate who is obviously interested in her because he simply is too much of an "good old man soul". It may sound harsh, but speaking from experience, beggars can't be choosers and yet that is exactly what she is. He is not cool enough for her to be interested in as she lusts after the punk bad boy. This brings us to her dynamic with the other characters in the movie. From the very beginning her brother is portrayed as a selfish sports jock and there is no indication of anything different until the end. Side note, for her brother and best friend to hook up, which is in the trailer so I am not spoiling anything, is a terrible thing for them to do, especially the best friend. She has firsthand experience of how much of a jerk Nadine’s brother is to her and yet she "falls in love with him" after a one night stand. The main bright spots of the film are woody Harrelson and Hayden Szeto. Harrelson plays the down to earth, real talk teacher that Nadine constantly is coming to for advice even though she often doesn't like what she hears. Szeto plays Nadine’s lone admirer at the school who she is often ignoring. I honestly got more of an experience out of what it's like to be a teenager from him than from any other character and he is defiantly a minor side character. Both of these characters bring the much-needed comedy in an otherwise deeply depressing film. Kira Sedgwick plays Nadine’s unstable mother which she does well by making you absolutely hate her and wish she wasn't allowed to have children. The problem is much of the tension between mother and daughter seems manufactured as the filmmakers don't seem to know what kind of relationship they want them to have. Most of the time the relationship seem strained and unfixable only for there to be a sudden mood change that is not explained. Sedgwick is a very flat character with no evident growth. That, I think is the biggest problem with the film. All the characters are flat, have little to know shown growth and then at the end we are just supposed to accept that they have somehow grown. Nadine is the closest character to round as there is in the film, and most of the time she just seems whiny, only changing when forced to see knew evidence that is pulled out of thin air. Putting my personal issues aside I would say the film is average, gives a nice attempt at showing the teenage experience but definitely is not the masterpiece it seems to be trumpeted as. 2 pipes out of 4

The Accountant

The Accountant

With a boring name, The Accountant delivers on the action and intrigue. One of the better action flicks of the year, Ben Affleck rebounds after the dud of Batman V Superman to remind us he still has the skills. While the plot can be a stretch at its convenience at times, once one removes the stigma of the improbability of an autistic man becoming an accountant for the black-market kings of the world, it makes a lot of sense. The film follows Christian Wolfe (Ben Affleck) a heavily autistic accountant raised by a militaristic father who felt his autism was a crutch. Through brutal lessons and overexposure to triggers, Wolfe is turned into a high functioning autistic machine. Now a well-known in some circles as accountant for the underworld, cooking the books for mafia bosses, dictators and the like, he keeps a low profile as a small business tax consultant. Things go sideways when he is asked to uncool the books of a Private prosthetic company about to go public. Anna Kendrick plays the naive CBA who unintentionally found the error that brings Wolfe in to investigate and sets the whole drama in motion. There are plenty of things that are predictable in the film but they are all good natured and if you’re not paying attention they may seek up on you. You may just be too involved in the story to worry about what's coming next as I was. When Hollywood needed a solid action film to remain relevant, they have found it with the Accountant. Sometimes it’s best to go back to the basics and go with what you know. 3 pipes out of 4.

Avengers: Age Of Ultron

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Let me start this off with if you remove this movie from the marvel universe and simply look at it as an action movie it is a fun adventure that is a little rushed but all around good fun. When you insert it in to the Marvel machine and examine what was promised and the thought that should have gone into it, the film is an incredible disappointment. To start the movie off the Avengers are storming a hydra base attacking human hydra members. Form this scene, and subsequent scenes involving battles with robots, it is incredibly clear that the humans are CGI. I mean it’s horrifically obvious. The avengers look like they are fighting with ragdolls with what these hydra members looked like. Having this introduce the movie to the audience seems to be a huge let down when they are trying to hype you up with a quick reunion battle. The audience is then rushed through the creation of the main villain of the film in a sequence where he goes from nonexistence to the most evil thing the avengers have faced in a matter of 10 minutes. It is difficult for me to take a villain seriously when he is rushed into the film at lightning speed, given little development and chooses a stupid premise to destroy humans. James Spader does his absolute best to bring out the baddie in Ultron and does a spectacular job when he is talking. But when it comes to action, Ultron is about as menacing as a wet towel. There is never a point in the film where I felt there was a chance that the Avengers would lose. Another poor decision by Marvel is the portrayal of certain members of the team. Black Widow and the Hulk are shoehorned into a romance that has little to no build up going from 0 to lets run away together in 10 seconds. Tony Stark makes a monumental judgment error and creates Ultron, only to decide to make the exact same mistake again later in the film hoping for different results. As was pointed out to me by an online critique, Captain America gets more ribbing and flack for telling Tony to watch his language than Tony gets for creating supposedly the deadliest Artificial Intelligence ever. There are a few scenes that start to build the tension between Tony and Captain for Marvels next film, Captain America: Civil War, but by the end of the film everyone is lovey dovey. Age of Ultron was billed as a very dark film with a prominent theme being death. As it turns out there is actually very little death and the few that happen have little to no emotional impact due to the build of the characters. This has mostly been a nitpicking of a decent action film; my disappointment comes from the expectations from marvel and what appears to simply be a placeholder Avengers film, keeping the fans appeased until The Infinity War. 2 ½ stars out of 4.